Some have asked when the poem was written. It was written between January 1 and May 20, 1919.
Some have asked, whether hunting will soon be abolished. I cannot tell, but I think it unlikely. People do not willingly resign their pleasures; men who breed horses will want to gallop them across country; hunting is a pleasure, as well as an opportunity to gallop; it is also an instinct in man. Some have thought that if "small holdings," that is "produce gardens," intensively cultivated, of about an acre apiece, became common, so that the country became more rigidly enclosed than at present, hunting would be made almost impossible. The small holding is generally the property of the small farmer (like the French cultivateur) who fences permanently with wire and cannot take down the wire during the hunting season, as most English farmers do at present. Small holdings will probably increase in number near towns, but farmers seem agreed that they can never become the national system of farming. The big farm, that can treat the great tract with machines, seems likely to be the farm of the future.
Even if the small holdings system were to prevail, it would hardly prevail over the sporting instincts of the race. Beauty and delight are stronger than the will to work. I am pretty sure that a pack of hounds, coming feathery by, at the heels of a whip's horse, while the field takes station and the huntsman, drawing his horn, prepares to hunt, would shake the resolve of most small holders, digging in their lots with thrift, industry and self-control. And then, if the huntsman were to blow his horn, and the hounds to feather on it and give tongue, and find, and go away at head, I am pretty sure that most of the small holders of this race would follow them. It is in this race to hunt.
I will conclude with a portrait of old Baldy Hill, the earth-stopper, who in the darkness of the early morning gads about on a pony, to "stop" or "put to" all earths, in which a hard-pressed fox might hide. In the poem, he enters when the hunt is about to start, but he is an important figure in a hunting community, and deserves a portrait. He may come here, at the beginning, for Baldy Hill is at the beginning of all fox hunts. He dates from the beginning of Man. I have seen many a Baldy Hill in my life; he never fails to give me the feeling that he is Primitive Man survived. Primitive Man lived like that, in the woods, in the darkness, outwitting the wild things, while the rain dripped, and the owl cried, and the ghost came out from the grave. Baldy Hill stole the last litter of the last she-wolf to cross them with the King's hounds. He was in at the death of the last wild-boar. Sometimes, in looking at him, I think that his ashen stake must have a flint head, with which, on moony nights, he still creeps out, to rouse, it may be, the mammoth in his secret valley, or a sabretooth tiger, still caved in the woods. Life may and does shoot out into exotic forms, which may and do flower and perish. Perhaps when all the other forms of English life are gone, the Baldy Hill form, the stock form, will abide, still striding, head bent, with an ashen stake, after some wild thing, that has meat, or fur, or is difficult or dangerous to tackle.
Old Baldy Hill, the game old cock,
Still wore knee-gaiters and a smock.
He bore a five foot ashen stick
All scarred and pilled from many a click
Beating in covert with his sons
To drive the pheasants to the guns.
His face was beaten by the weather
To wrinkled red like bellows leather
He had a cold clear hard blue eye.
His snares made many a rabbit die.
On moony nights he found it pleasant
To stare the woods for roosting pheasant
Up near the tree-trunk on the bough.
He never trod behind a plough.
He and his two sons got their food
From wild things in the field and wood,
By snares, by ferrets put in holes,
By ridding pasture-land of moles;
By keeping, beating, trapping, poaching
And spaniel-and-retriever-coaching.
He and his sons had special merits
In breeding and in handling ferrets
Full many a snaky hob and jill
Had bit the thumbs of Baldy Hill.
He had no beard, but long white hair.
He bent in gait. He used to wear
Flowers in his smock, gold-clocks and peasen;
And spindle-fruit in hunting season.
I hope that he may live to wear spindle-fruit for many seasons to come. Hunting makes more people happy than anything I know. When people are happy together, I am quite certain that they build up something eternal, something both beautiful and divine, which weakens the power of all evil things upon this life of men and women.